ChronoSeal Operations Handbook (OPERATIONS)

This guide describes how to deploy, monitor, scale, and maintain the ChronoSeal daemon (chronoseald) in production environments.

1. Systemd Deployment

In single-host deployments, ChronoSeal runs as a systemd service.

Example systemd unit file (/etc/systemd/system/chronoseal.service):

[Unit]
Description=ChronoSeal Attestation Daemon
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=chronoseal
Group=chronoseal
WorkingDirectory=/var/lib/chronoseal
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/chronoseal run --config /etc/chronoseal.toml
Restart=always
RestartSec=5
LimitNOFILE=65536

# Hardening
ProtectSystem=full
ProtectHome=true
NoNewPrivileges=true

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Enable and start the service:

systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl enable --now chronoseal

2. Reverse Proxy & TLS Termination

Do not expose the chronoseald HTTP interface directly to the public internet. Run it behind a reverse proxy (e.g. Nginx, HAProxy, Envoy) that enforces TLS termination and CORS limits.

Example Nginx config (/etc/nginx/sites-available/chronoseal.conf):

server {
    listen 443 ssl http2;
    server_name attestation.example.com;

    ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/fullchain.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/privkey.pem;
    ssl_protocols TLSv1.2 TLSv1.3;
    ssl_ciphers HIGH:!aNULL:!MD5;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
    }
}

3. Storage Backends & Scaling

A. SQLite (`sqlite-in-disk`)

Best For: Single-node deployments.
Configuration: Specify a writeable path in db_path and set db_type = "sqlite-in-disk".
Operational Note: Concurrency is limited by SQLite's single-writer database lock. Optimistic CAS reduces collisions, but high write volumes can cause queue congestion.

B. Valkey / Redis (`valkey`)

Best For: Distributed or high-concurrency environments.
Configuration: Set db_type = "valkey" and specify the node addresses via CHRONOSEAL_VALKEY_ADDR.
Horizontal Scaling: Set up multiple chronoseald stateless daemon nodes. Direct all nodes to connect to the same shared Valkey cluster. This ensures session consistency across requests routed to different nodes.

4. Monitoring & Observability

Prometheus Integration

Scrape metrics from the /metrics endpoint:

scrape_configs:
  - job_name: 'chronoseal'
    static_configs:
      - targets: ['localhost:8080']

Key operational alerts to configure:

chronoseal_verification_failures_total rate spike: Indicates a coordinated scraping campaign, automated spoofing attempt, or misconfigured frontend app.
chronoseal_storage_latency_seconds increase: Indicates storage backend bottleneck or lock congestion.

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